A successful playground is defined by the amount of usage it gets. Children come back time after time to a playground that can sustain their interest – and this means designing playspaces to delight, entertain and engage them.

Similar sized equipment or a limited choice of activities will not meet all their developmental needs and not result in frequent return visits. Hence it is important to deliver a diversity of opportunities across a range of playspaces as no one site can realistically deliver on all of these developmental needs for all stages of a child’s growth.

Through play children develop qualities necessary in adulthood, such as:

• problem solving
• independence
• self-awareness
• creativity
• resilience
• spatial knowledge
• flexibility
• and ability to deal with change

Play provides the opportunity for children to engage with other children, be active and learn, extend and adapt their skills. It is an essential tool for physical, social, cognitive and emotional development in children and is critical to children being able to reach their full potential.

Quality playspaces provide venues for community events, activities and social gatherings and often become the social hub for local communities, particularly for those with young children, and contribute to the landscape appeal of individual settings. Playspaces provide and facilitate a broad range of benefits for local communities, including:

• Facilitating opportunities for social interaction
• Contributing to a sense of community connectedness and wellbeing
• Contributing to community pride and appreciation of the natural environment
• Encouraging participation in physical activities (which derives a range of physical and mental health benefits)

Play must look beyond the typical play equipment generally associated with traditional playgrounds. Traditional playgrounds generally provide some physical opportunities for play, but often fail to cater for the full spectrum of children’s developmental needs.

It is important to note that the Strategy is aspirational, and it is acknowledged that not all of the recommendations will be implemented in the life of the Strategy.

Implementation relies on a number of factors including budget, the level of development and the availability of open space in appropriate locations (i.e. gap areas).

The first 4 recommendations are service levels and provision standards.

1. Aspire to meet a minimum playground provision standard of within a 400 metre radius (as the crow flies) of 95% of all residential dwellings.
2. Implement consistent playground classifications for all future playground developments as detailed in the table above.
3. Implement consistent playground infrastructure provision standards for each playground classification as detailed above.
4. Use the playground classifications (Recommendation 2) and playground infrastructure provision standards (Recommendation 3) to inform future planning, design, infrastructure provision and maintenance standards for playspaces to ensure viability and fit-for-purpose of the size, quality and diversity with the view to:
   • Providing clarity around playground provision and services levels
   • Providing a variety of play experiences for the community i.e. from larger regional destination playspaces to smaller local playspaces
   • Ensuring Monash playspaces offer our community a broad range of high quality, creative play opportunities for different age groups and abilities
   • Better understanding future funding requirements and budgeting implications related to the provision playgrounds.

For the full set of recommendations please refer to the strategy document.